If only Democrats celebrated non-government, non-union and non-Obama-crony labor on non-Labor Days.
Five Labor Days after the housing bubble burst in the Fall of 2008 and Democrats’ February 2009 passage of President Barack Hussein Obama’s signature American Recovery and Reinvestment (“stimulus”) Act, fewer Americans hold jobs this Labor Day than were employed when he was first inaugurated at Noon, January 20, 2009. Long-term unemployment remains the highest since WWII, U-6 underemployment rates remain at Great Depression era levels and the highest percentage of jobs today are part-time than at any time in U.S. history.
But not to worry since Republican D.C. elites will most probably make sure Obamacare remains fully funded and illegal immigrants get to vote for Democrats sooner rather than later. Because after all, if even more Americans are priced out of the work force by cheap labor, have their full-time jobs reduced to part-time or drop out of the work force altogether to draw disability or move in with their parents, Obama can boast of an even lower U-3 unemployment rate next Labor Day. Yet, something happened on the way to the President Obama’s latest “re-focus” on the economy:
- Even the non-volatile Gallup U-3 unemployment rate jumped from 7.7% to 8.9% in the last 30 days;
- New home sales collapsed 13.4% in July; and
- Retailers began counting shopping days left till Christmas at 125.
Thankfully, the worst steward of the U.S. economy since FDR and Hoover is constitutionally prohibited from running for or serving another term as Chief Executive, but I remain stupefied that he managed to get re-elected given the Carville “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” and Reagan “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” rules that had prevented the re-hiring of such abject failures since at least WWII.
But maybe there was a connection between the economic drop-outs that have rendered the “official” unemployment rate irrelevant as a barometer of economic health today and the traditional blue-collar workers in Ohio and other purple states that dropped out of the Election of 2012. Of course, it didn’t help that the Republican standard-bearer was caught on a Democrat’s candid camera writing off 47% of the electorate or that Senate Bill 5 in Ohio didn’t mirror the Wisconsin version that exempted firefighters and police from its public employee collective bargaining-reduction bill.
Clearly, union members, public and private, were energized to turn out to protect their government benefactors, but we suspect that an even bigger factor were those middle aged-unemployed former auto industry-related employees that lost hope in the future and sought to maximize a welfare future by at least not voting against the Democrat.
Sadly for them, they believed the spin spouted by the left such as that of Jonathan Alter’s in his book The Center Holds, which framed the election as one in which, “The social contract established during the New Deal was on the line.”
Nothing could be further from the truth as the Romney-Ryan ticket proposed no actual cuts in the eligibility requirements of any welfare program. The only reason welfare spending has risen exponentially over the past five years to record levels is due to the failure of the Obama administration and the Democrats that controlled both houses of Congress during the 2009-10 to enact job creation-friendly legislation and their unprecedented affirmative action in seeking out welfare recipients with advertising and coercive actions. Moreover, the trillion-dollar record budget deficits Obama has run ever year of his presidency makes funding of pensions and future welfare largess less likely to be sustained. Finally, Democrat Party economics delayed Boeing jobs in S.C., harbor-dredging and trade-related jobs along the east coast, continues to prevent Keystone pipeline and energy-related jobs in the west and kills jobs daily via Obamacare nationwide.
One hopes that those Election Day dropouts as well as the record 21 million youth now living with their parents and even a significant portion of blacks mired in their group’s record unemployment will drop in polling booths in 2014 and 2016 to cast votes for tea party conservatives in Party of Lincoln if they wish to ever celebrate a Labor Day worthy of its name.
The failure of the Democratic Party to live up to their brand as the party of the poor and workers is, at its heart, a moral issue. Rocket scientists are not required to determine what happens to jobs and incomes when you tax and regulate job creators and wealth creation with impunity. Given their record in this area since LBJ rejected JFK’s supply-side tax rate cuts, once would think that Democrats’ intent is to produce more poor voters they can convince are dependent on them. When America traveled this way before, Ronald Reagan framed the issue thusly in his 1980 GOP presidential nomination acceptance speech:
The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership –i n the White House and in Congress — for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities.
My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves. Those who believe we can, have no business leading the nation…
“Trust me” government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties.
Here’s hoping that enough Americans come to view things as Reagan did then. If a Reagan could so strike electoral fear in Boll Weevil Democrats that they passed his economy-boosting tax rate cuts, maybe a tea partier-fueled Republican ticket could strike enough fear in enough of the GOP D.C. ruling class to repeal Obamacare and EPA regulations killing full-time jobs everyday and preventing the creation of enough new jobs to even keep pace with population growth.
Its time to put hope in the free market capitalism that made American the exceptional City on a Hill rather than one man that promises hope while only delivering changes for the worse.
Mike DeVine‘s Right.com
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
